Zac Rinaldo Will Miss Start of Camp

What’s the breaking news surrounding New England’s favorite hockey team? Today the news is that forward Zac Rinaldo will not be participating in the first few days of training camp. While Bruins fans already knew that David Krejci and Torey Krug would be taking things ‘lighter’ to start due to their off-season surgeries, this announcement comes as a shock.

A couple of weeks ago, we discussed the possibility of Zac Rinaldo hanging around Boston for another season or his potential to be dealt away. Today, we get news from Don Sweeney that Rinaldo is “nursing a lower body injury,” causing him to miss the first few days of camp. When asked about pre-season games, Sweeney told the media that Rinaldo is available to play, despite his lingering 5-game suspension stating;

“It’s been cleared by the league for him to play in preseason games,” said Sweeney of Rinaldo, who was also suspended for five games in the AHL for another head shot days after the dirty head check on Paquette. “He has a little bit of a lower body injury that he’s nursing right now, so he won’t be out there for the first few days of camp. We’ll monitor and see. He’d still have to serve the five games for the regular season, but there are no restrictions for the preseason.”

Hurray! We get to see him suit up again for the Black and Gold and make a joke out of himself once more. Last season when Rinaldo was signed, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I made light of the situation and decided that the Bruins needed a rough and tough guy and perhaps he had curved his game and matured.

Since my initial benefit, he has come to symbolize some really bad decisions. Decisions that he has made himself and that the team has made as a whole. The Bruins organization decided to deal away guys like Shawn Thornton and Milan Lucic to better the team image, but then sign a guy who threw cheap shots and did nothing positive in over 50 games. Naturally, I stand corrected and hope that even if he makes a decent showing in preseason, the Bruins decide to part ways.